The truth about our NHS – warts ’n’ all

We are constantly told by the BBC and the Labour Party that the NHS is facing a severe funding crisis, even though the Government has ringfenced the health service budget.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so strapped for cash if managers hadn’t frittered away £658 million stockpiling virtually useless anti-flu drugs.

Half a billion here, half a billion there and it soon adds up to serious money. even the Guardian, normally a Gadarene advocate of drunken sailor public spending, thinks it’s a front-page scandal.

an independent group of scientists has had to fight for four years to uncover just how much was wasted on stocks of Tamiflu and relenza. In 2009, the last Labour government went on a panicbuying spree in response to a swine flu scare. Needless to say, the predicted pandemic failed to materialise.

Just as well ministers didn’t react in the same way they did to the foot and mouth hysteria in 2001. Otherwise they’d have rounded up millions of perfectly healthy people at gunpoint and chucked them on bonfires, like medieval witches.

Not that these drugs would have been particularly effective at preventing the afflicted dropping like flies.

at best, these scientists say Tamiflu can shorten the symptoms of influenza by approximately half a day.

You’d have been better off taking a couple of aspirin, washed down with a honey and lemon hot toddy fortified with a large Glennhoddle.

Still, it’s only taxpayers’ money — which as far as the politicians and the suits who run the NHS are concerned means it’s nobody’s money in particular. If the NHS was run like a proper business, it would have filed for bankruptcy years ago and gone the way of other inefficient, loss-making state monoliths such as British Leyland and the National Coal Board.

every incoming government enters office with a promise to rescue the health service. remember Blair’s absurd ‘24 hours to save the NHS’? But each reorganisation simply serves to make things worse.

The only beneficiaries of these rolling reforms are the box-tickers and form-fillers who work in the burgeoning NHS bureaucracy.

Managers and ministers wheel out statistics to ‘prove’ that services to patients are getting better. But I prefer to rely on anecdotal evidence, THE fall-out from the recent floods in the West Country continues to pose unexpected dangers. Residents of Telford, Shropshire, reported an unpleasant fishy smell wafting into their homes. Severn Trent Water officials investigated and discovered a sewer blocked by what appeared to be a flesh-eating piranha. One of the workmen on the scene said: ‘It scared us to death. We were told by a neighbour that someone had been flushing piranha down the toilet.’ As you do. I’ve heard of snakes turning up in toilet bowls, because it tells you what’s going on in the real world. Thanks to the geniuses who decided that GPs should be paid more money for less work, we may soon have to wait four weeks to see a doctor.

It’s bad enough already trying to get through the infuriating automated appointments system. even then, the treatment you can expect to receive for minor ailments is made as complicated as possible.

This week, I’ve received two dispatches from the sharp end of Britain’s cutting-edge, 21st-century healthcare system.

reader Stuart Jodrell, f rom Pontefract, returned from a longhaul holiday with deafness brought but piranhas would appear to be a new phenomenon in Britain. Further examination showed the fish in question was actually a harmless tilapia. But that’s still puzzling, since tilapia are native to waters around Africa, not the River Severn. Must be something to do with global warming. Wait till the ‘climate change’ crowd get hold of this story. We’ll be told that unless we embrace higher ‘green’ taxes, our lavatories will soon be crawling with alligators and piranhas. It might be a good idea to keep a speargun in the loo, alongside the Toilet Duck. on by the flight. He had an infection in one ear, solid wax in the other.

after treating the infection with drops and the wax with olive oil, he made an appointment at his local clinic to have his ears syringed.

Before this could take place, the nurse insisted on Stuart filling in a pointless elf ’n’safety questionnaire. When he asked why this was necessary, he was told the syringing couldn’t be performed without a full risk assessment being carried out.

Standard procedure, sir. Since when? Stuart’s had his ears syringed several times over the years without any bureaucratic malarkey.

When the nurse finally got round to inspecting his ears, she said that because the olive oil had shifted the wax she wasn’t able to administer the treatment and he would have to make an appointment at a specialist ear, Nose and Throat department. Unfortunately, the eNT clinic couldn’t accommodate him for five weeks.

Stuart’s experience would strike a chord with another reader, Sue Sloan, from Calne in Wiltshire.

Sue writes: ‘Some years ago I had an unsightly wart near my ear (don’t l augh) which my GP quickly removed with a quick blast of liquid nitrogen from a canister under his desk. Waiting time: zero. Cost: probably about 50p.’

recently, Sue developed another painful wart on her little finger. This time her doctor referred her to a ‘GP co-operative service’. Couldn’t he just give her a blast of liquid nitrogen again?

He explained that wasn’t possible because his ‘cryo funding’ (whatever that is) had been cut.

She would have to attend a surgery seven miles away in a different town, where she can’t be seen until the end of May — a full three months after her original GP consultation.

all attempts to bring forward the appointment have proved fruitless. When her number does come up, Sue will have to take a day off work.

SHe says: ‘So far, wart No 2 has involved five letters and four telephone conversations with four different admin staff, at goodness knows what cost.’ all this for a procedure that used to take about five minutes.

Neither of these conditions is lifethreatening and you might reasonably argue they could be treated by over-the- counter medicines. But such non-prescription products are notoriously expensive and usually pretty ineffective.

Stuart and Sue have paid taxes towards the NHS all their lives and are entitled to expect prompt treatment in return.

But this is the everyday reality of our ‘world- class’ health service, which thinks nothing of blowing £658 million on questionable flu medicine, but can’t afford a few bob for a can of liquid nitrogen.

Whatever the politicians and propagandists tell you, that’s the unvarnished truth about the NHS.

Warts ’n’ all.